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I've been considering studying for the PMP exam. So today in the bookstore I browsed a few PMP exam prep books. Having just finished a master's in organizational leadership that has quite a focus on teams, I decided to look for areas of overlap. Places where the PMP aspects of building a team and helping the team perform would be an easy read for me given my recent experience in gradual school.

I found a few pages in the exam prep books - less than 10 total. They briefly covered Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Tuckman's Stages of Group Development, Vroom's Expectancy Theory of Motivation, etc. All very good stuff. Having spent a year studying this 10 pages or less, appeared rather brief for an exam guide that wishes to prepare a project manager to optimize a project's performance.

In one guide the process of Manage Project Team is defined:

"3.5.5 Manage Project Team

Manage Project Team is the process of tracking team member performance, providing feed…

I enjoy reading about creativity, I hope that some of it rubs off on me. Here's a new book I just bought, very creative, a colorful book, full of ideas and exercises. I hope that I can work through some of the Actions & Movements discussed in the book in my next 37 days.

However one has to wonder about the publisher, Cambridge, did they even read the book, did the editors read the chapters? Is there one ounce of creativity in the lot of them? Watch the video of the thumb through - then watch the video of Life is a Verb - which one would you buy? I did a video - but it got lost in the recycle bin of Google's blogger site. So just cruise over to Amazon and check out each book...

No - recent facts are that the US ranks 16th globally in Internet speed. (source: State of the Internet Q1 2010 report by Akamai). Yes, South Korea is #1 (12 Mbps average speed).

While I welcome the new super Wi-Fi that is being proposed - the longer wavelengths will have much better penetration and reach. I believe fast internet is important to our economy and I believe we could do better. The examples are available, the data is known (read the Akamai report). Obama’s stimulus package ($789 Billion) allocated $7.2 B for broadband funding. I don't know if the money has been spent yet, but it would not show up in the Q1 2010 report.

On a side note - I find it ironic that CNN used a picture of kids holding up their OLPC XO laptops that use peer to peer netwo…

This group initiative is from the UNC-Charlotte's Venture Group Initiatives Manual.

I've used this initiative to discuss team work, leadership, followership, understanding the client and may other issues that arise during the debriefing.

In one training at SolutionsIQ the teams were given the requirements (build a bridge of 12" span - but when the customer acceptance was done the boat that had to pass under the bridge had towers and antenna that exceeded the specification height. The teams had to negotiate with the Product Owner on the physical acceptance test - a toy boat passing under the bridge.

One team created their own "Unit-Test" - the box.

Golden Gates

(Facilitator Info)

Materials:
60 sheets of paper per group, paper clips per group, approximately 60 feet of string, tape for the string, copies of rules (next page) for each group, a ruler, flip chart for debrief.

In a blog post by Michele Sliger - Personal Agile she has asked her twitter base if people are using Agile techniques to manage their personal lives. Does the Agile mind set creep into personal lives? E.G. do we eat our own dog-food? I would hope so, and expect it if the philosophy is sound.

Here is my experience. Written about the trip my wife and I planned to take when the Banking Meltdown, had dried up most of the software projects back in the winter of 2009. I walked into my director and suggested that I could take a month without pay and that might be a good thing. He didn't bat an eye lash - yes, when would you like to leave, are you really coming back? Yes, I did wish to come back, I enjoyed working for SolutionsIQ. The timing was great, it was January, 2009 and there were no new projects coming into the pipeline, layoffs were looming and I wanted a sabbatical. A chance to go ski the best snow between Seattle and Denver.

Popular Topics

Assuming you are on a Scrum/Agile software development team, then one of the first 'working agreements' you have created with your team is a 'Definition of Done' - right?

Oh - you don't have a definition of what aspects a user story that is done will exhibit. Well then, you need to create a list of attributes of a done story. One way to do this would be to Google 'definition of done' ... here let me do that for you: http://tinyurl.com/3br9o6n. Then you could just use someone else's definition - there DONE!

But that would be cheating -- right? It is not the artifact - the list of done criteria, that is important for your team - it is the act of doing it for themselves, it is that shared understanding of having a debate over some of the gray areas that create a true working agreement. If some of the team believes that a story being done means that there can be no bugs found in the code - but some believe that there can be some minor issues - well, then yo…

I’ve noticed a new trend—people have been gaining titles. When I was younger, only doctors had initials (like MD) after their names. I always figured that was because society held doctors, and sometime priests (OFM) in such high regard that we wanted to point out their higher learning. I hope it was to encourage others to apply themselves in school and become doctors also. Could it have been boastful?

The Wikipedia describes these “post-nominal initials”:Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, are letters placed after the name of a person to indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor. An individual may use several different sets of post-nominal letters. The order in which these are listed after a name is based on the order of precedence and category of the order.
That’s good enough for me.
So I ask you: is the use of CSM or CSP an appropriate use of post-nominal initials?
If your not an agilista, you may wonder …

Amazon book order
What I notice first and really like is the subtle implication in the shadow of the "i" in Drive is a person taking one step in a running motion. This brings to mind the old saying - "there is no I in TEAM". There is however a ME in TEAM, and there is an I in DRIVE. And when one talks about motivating a team or an individual - it all starts with - what's in it for me.

Introduction

Pink starts with an early experiment with monkeys on problem solving. Seems the monkeys were much better problem solver's than the scientist thought they should be. This 1949 experiment is explained as the early understanding of motivation. At the time there were two main drivers of motivation: biological & external influences. Harry F. Harlow defines the third drive in a novel theory: "The performance of the task provided intrinsic reward" (p 3). This is Dan Pink's M…

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought the technique needed to move forward was one thing, yet the person leading (your leader) assumed something else was what was needed? Did you feel misaligned, unheard, marginalized? Would you believe that 54% of all leaders only use ONE style of leadership - regardless of the situation? Does that one style of leading work well for the many levels of development we see on a team?

Perhaps your team should investigate one of the most widely used leadership models in the world ("used to train over 5 million managers in the world’s most respected organizations"). And it's not just for the leaders. The training is most effective when everyone receives the training and uses the model. The use of a ubiquitous language on your team is a collaboration accelerator. When everyone is using the same mental model, speaking the same vernacular hours of frustration and discussion may be curtailed, and alignment achieved, outcomes …